Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richmond City Council (Richmond, California)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Looks like discussion has ground to a halt. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:40, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Richmond City Council (Richmond, California)

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Fails WP:NORG. Legislative body of a suburb with a population of only marginally more than 100k. Neither article nor BEFORE shows much in the way of coverage outside the Bay Area, which is exactly what would be expected. Further, other notability discussions on government bodies at a tertiary level such as this have shown that notability hinges on what has been written about the body itself, not on what has been written about what it has done. Sources discussing the legislative process are WP:ROUTINE. Same for elections, unless multiple ones have recieved long lasting, widespread coverage. Not finding any. John from Idegon (talk) 21:35, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * It has widespread coverage in multiple reliable sources from she region such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury news and outside such as the ny Times.Ndołkah (talk) 22:15, 24 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete or possibly redirect to Richmond, California. This is not a newsworthy city council. BTW don’t be fooled by its current enormous size. The article was a modest 7,300 bytes until December 24, 2019, when User:Ndołkah expanded it to 33,390 bytes in a single day, using pretty much all local sources. -- MelanieN (talk) 22:19, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Don't be fooled by MelanieN's spurious comment, the current state of the article is what we are debating not what it looked like before. And I have added a lot more content since, regarding regarding the coal ban, the casino, and I will be adding more about the city manager's firing controversy as well.Ndołkah☆ (talk) 01:30, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - clear delete, or redirect to the city article. Simple routine coverage of a a local council. Like EVERY other town council in the U.S. Onel 5969  TT me 00:49, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * You are wrong, and here is why, the council has multiple sources of in depth coverage of its inner workings in reliable sources. OTHERSTUFF isn't a valid argument. This is a major port city with lots of media attention.Ndołkah☆ (talk) 01:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep. Clearly meets GNG. To the extent sources are available -- as they evidently are here -- Wikipedia should have such an article for every municipal legislative body. The requirements implied above, namely (1) that sources must be not merely independent but non-local (just how far away do they have to be?!), or that (2) sources are acceptable only if they somehow relate to the legislative body in itself and not merely to what it does, are without any foundation in Wikipedia's policy or purpose. -- Visviva (talk) 04:40, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment also there is a category for city council's, and articles for the city councils of two other Richmonds in Virginia and British Columbia. I feel like these mass nominations are arbitrary and unproductive to say the least and we should really have a discussion on a more inclusionary Wikipedia that fosters information on our politicians! Also i forgot to state in my earlier comment that I suggest we Keep this page as it clearly meets the GNG particularly the coverage of the councils Corky Boozé years and his constant harassment of lesbian lawmaker Jovanka Beckels. It meets ORG as it clearly has "organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources." This article and this council much like those of Berkeley San Francisco San Jose and Sacramento have more than trivial coverage that covers their goings on in depth going back decades! Ndołkah (talk) 07:04, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * If you want to write Wikipedia-style articles about Richmond's city councillors, then by all means you're free to go start your own local Richmondpedia. Wikipedia, however, is an international project, which needs to consider the national and international significance of our article topics when we're deciding who warrants inclusion here and who does not — we have finite resources and a finite volunteer base of responsible editors, but an infinite number of egress points for bad actors to misuse our articles as a platform for libel or slander or unsourced personal criticism. Our quality control model, which relies on the oversight of other editors after an edit has already been made, works very well on high profile topics like Donald Trump or Justin Trudeau — but below a certain level of nationalized prominence, it fails very quickly, because the article simply does not generate enough traffic to control bad edits that way. So we differentiate between the state and national levels of political office, which are within our mandate because of the roles' wide nationalized importance, and the local level of political office, where we impose a much higher bar for inclusion than just the ability to verify that the person exists. Literally every town and city on earth has a city council, with anywhere between five and 50 councillors (depending on location) serving on it at any given time — but keeping an article about every city councillor on the planet is not feasibly maintainable within the limits of Wikipedia's resource and volunteer base, and most city councillors are not of wider than purely local interest anyway. So the notability test for city councillors is not just "s/he exists", it is "s/he has a nationalized profile significantly greater than most other city councillors". Bearcat (talk) 15:15, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * You're wrong, Wikipedia is infinite it has over 5 million articles like ones about obscure animals or some bacterium no one ever reads about but its important to have, per WP:PAPER wikipedia is not paper and does not have limits, if one exists and is verifiable and notable the "Other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page, there is no practical limit to the number of topics Wikipedia can cover or the total amount of content." applies. The shortcomings of "quality" editors whatever that means are irrelevant as there is boundless time for people to edit these pages as they see fit, there are also millions of high schools all of them notable not all of them have articles (yet!) having a history of city politics on their own article for city's over 100,000 people which is a large city is worth it for posterity and easily meets the GNG.Ndołkah☆ (talk) 01:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not wrong. Plant and animal species are not prone to trying to exploit Wikipedia as a venue for advertorial self-promotion, or controlling the narrative in the event of a controversy — but people (and the companies and organizations that people create) are, so the inclusion standards for human topics have to be much stricter and much more achievement-oriented than the notability standards for non-human topics. Whether you like it or not, the notability standard that city councillors have to clear to qualify for Wikipedia articles is that they have a much more nationalized claim of significance than the norm — and given that every city councillor everywhere can always show some evidence of local coverage in their local media, the existence of such local coverage is not automatically evidence that a city councillor clears the bar that they have to clear. And shooting the messenger is not going to overturn that longstanding consensus all by itself — if you think that should change, you're certainly free to initiate a broader policy discussion on whether our notability standards for city councillors should change, but that would have to be a broad policy discussion in projectspace, not one AFD discussion on one midsized city council. Bearcat (talk) 16:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes you are wrong because there is no "national standard" for local counselors, regardless the topic is a "local council" and the bar is set at the GNG not your notions of local sources don't matter, your wrong, reliable sources like newspapers matter and this article has a big load of them, do you challenge that?Ndołkah☆ (talk) 21:43, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is a national standard for local councillors. We have a long-established consensus that we do not unconditionally accept every city councillor in every city as "inherently" notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia — the inclusion bar for city councillors most certainly is to show that they're significantly more notable than the norm. Bearcat (talk) 17:33, 7 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep redirecting this is like redirecting United States Congress to United States. Merging this back in would make the area article too big. Being local does not make sources unreliable. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:25, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions.-- Marchjuly (talk) 00:46, 26 December 2019 (UTC) --
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:46, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:46, 26 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Please take care to avoid posting anything which might be seen as a problem per WP:CANVASS like you did here when discussing this or any other article nominated for deletion; this also pertains to off-Wikipedia discussion as well. While it considered acceptable to try and notify others who might be interested in contributing to a particular of the discussion, any arguments in favor or keeping or deleting an article should be made in the relevant AfD discussion because that's where the consensus on what to do is going to be determined. If you feel that the discussion has stagnated or otherwise there's a need for wider input, simply adding a Template:Please see is all that it generally needed, but there are other ways to do so such as WP:DELSORT tags, etc. as explained in WP:APPNOTE. However, anything perceived as either directly or indirectly soliciting support for one side or another that is considered an attempt to try and swing things a particular way can result in a warning or even a block being issued by an administrator. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:02, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge/delete This is not an article about the city council, it's biographical blurbs of its former members, plus a few outdated news items. Richmond,_California can certainly be expanded. If kept it would need a TNT to be about the council's structure, membership, and notable history, not a limited selection of supposed controversies and who the vice mayor dressed up as at a local festival. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎ Reywas92 (talk • contribs) 05:38, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep. Local councils are inherently notable. Rathfelder (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Care to provide any evidence for this utter falsehood? I only see 10 members of Category:California city councils, not 482 for every municipality there. Local government can be covered in a Government section of the city's article. Richmond is only the 61st-largest city in California and does not need a separate page for its council; if it does, inherent notability is not a valid reason why. Reywas92Talk 23:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I disagree, the Richmond article is too long and sophisticated to include the city council article on it. Just because other articles don't exists doesn't mean this article shouldn't. It's inherently notable because of all the sources such as the San Francisco Chronicle, East Bay Times, San Jose Mercury News, Richmond Confidential, The Berkeley Daily Planet, and other sources as seen in the article that cover the council in depth, as per the GNG which states, "addresses the topic directly and in detail" which many citations do, others provide some coverage and the GNG also states "but it does not need to be the main topic" which means they are still GNG criteria that are met.Ndołkah☆ (talk) 22:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep per Rathfelder and WP:SOFIXIT. ミラP 22:45, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep and cleanup, excessive biographical information regarding current or former council members who have their own Wikipedia articles should be removed from this article if it is kept as a result of this discussion.--TommyBoy (talk) 01:47, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep, agree it needs a cleanup though and removal of said excessive biographical info. Casio5309 (talk) 13:29, 28 December 2019 (UTC)Casio5309 CU blocked


 * delete Really, this should be no more than a couple of paragraphs in Richmond, California— which it already is. There's no real need for articles on the councilmembers and then repeating material from them here; as a rule politicians at that level have been held not notable unless they achieved some level of notoriety which went beyond routine local media coverage, which BTW is exactly what the citations look like. I'm also concerned about what looks like a great deal of WP:OR in the portrayal here of the various members: I think you would be hard-pressed to find a genuinely secondary source which is making the kind of analysis which I see in this writing, which BTW is a potential problem in the politics section of the main article. It does not come across as a widely-accepted history of things, but as someone's synthesis of daily news articles from the SF and Berkeley papers. Mangoe (talk) 06:21, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep city of significant size, seems fair enough to have an article detailing how the municipal government works.NotButtigieg (talk) 16:37, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , what is the policy basis for your argument? The closing administrator will disregard WP:ILIKEIT arguments such as this. They also will disregard utterly felicitous arguments such as "city councils are inherently notable." John from Idegon (talk) 19:55, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep Meets WP:GNG. reliable sources are available WP:NEXIST We have room for the article WP:NOTPAPER Wm335td (talk) 21:05, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep We have articles for pretty well all the local councils in the UK, many with a population only a fraction of Richmond's. Elected local authorities are notable. They control significant resources.  They generate significant coverage in independent sources. Richmond is bigger than many independent countries.  The issue is the notability of the subject, not the quality of the article.   Rathfelder (talk) 11:40, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
 * What this says is that, as usual, UK subjects are not held to as high a standard as American subjects. If you are on a project to collect everything that has ever been written down, then sure, notability isn't ever going to be a problem, and that seems to be the trend of late, except for a distaste for repeating advertising. But really, the level of detail in these articles is uniformly excessive, and one's typical reason to read an encyclopedia— to get a brief overview of a subject— is now being consistently thwarted on the project by inclusion of too much detail and excessive repetition, which this article is in spades. The truth, apparently, is that Green candidates have been unusually successful in this town; but that's something that belongs in the main article in a paragraph or two, not a labored listing of every election result and the repetition of the biographies of a lot of figures which, at one point, we decided did not merit treatment here. I also note in closing that picking a random article on a UK district (Babergh) I'm not seeing a good reason to split out the council elections as a separate article. Mangoe (talk) 17:39, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comparing thousand year old political groups from Britain to similar groups considerably younger in the states isn't on point at all. It's not some qualitative thing about city councils that make British city councils notable. Our standards for inclusion are based on the volume and quality of things written about the subject. A thousand year old body is far more likely to qualify than a >200 year old body. John from Idegon (talk) 18:00, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You obviously dont know much about local government in the UK if you think any of our organisations are a thousand years old. Hardly any go back before 1974.  But that is not the point.  I think the burden of proof is on you to show that an elected local government organisation is not notable. Rathfelder (talk) 18:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * So what's the problem Mangoe? Wikipedia is not PAPERNdołkah☆ (talk) 04:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia IS paper. The notion that electronic paper frees us from every limit that material paper lays upon us is simply untrue. If nothing else, these political body articles call for (and hardly ever get) a high degree of maintenance; they are routinely dated. Given that there are over three thousand counties alone in the US, the work needed to keep them current is extensive, and when one throws in the various municipalities of all sizes, it simply becomes too much to keep up with, and the utility of the information is dubious at best, especially considering how it is often incorrect anyway. I would also note, for John from Idegon's benefit, that the British district I happened to pick (and this was pure chance, as I assure everyone) only dates back to 1974. British local governmental structure, unlike in the US, is realigned and restructure apparently every several decades, and least in the last century or two. Writing about those structures, at a high level, is worthwhile; the level of detail represented in this article is not, and the fact that in a paper encyclopedia space constraints would force a more reasonable assessment is not a mark in our favor. Mangoe (talk) 12:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 08:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Mangoe clearly doesnt think much of the article, but has not demonstrated that the subject is not notable. Rathfelder (talk) 18:32, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia really isn't paper it's a policy which you have to follow here seeWP:PAPER and this discussion is only about the Richmond City Council not xy and z council and not about the finer points of UK municipal government either.Ndołkah☆ (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.